Sunday, October 31, 2010

"On a last-minute visit for Republican John Raese's Senate campaign, Sarah Palin said Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin is a "nice guy" who's better off sticking with his current gig.

"He's such a nice governor, I think that 'Manchin in the mansion' just kind of fits," Palin told the crowd at a rally for Raese, gesturing to the governor's official home just down the riverfront street.

It was the only time Palin uttered Manchin's name during her appearance. Instead, she told the crowd that she preferred to call him the

"would-be rubber stamp" for President Barack Obama.

Palin's visit was finalized at the last minute, less than 24 hours before she took the stage with Raese and rock guitarist Ted Nugent — and

three days before the bulk of voters will head to the polls.

But her eleventh-hour stopover in the sleepy capital underscores just how much Republicans want to win the West Virginia Senate seat — and how nationalized the race has become over the past four months. Within minutes of Palin's arrival, Manchin's campaign announced that former President Bill Clinton would make a second appearance in the state Monday to campaign for the governor.

The well-liked Manchin started off the Senate race with a solid lead, but Republicans' strategy to make the contest a referendum on the unpopular president has proved effective — as

Manchin boasts some of the best approval ratings in the country in his role as governor, but Obama has some of the lowest as president, hovering around 32 percent favorability in some polls.

That's why, despite being just blocks from Manchin's residence, Palin mostly steered clear of the governor in her only visit to the Mountain State this cycle. She said she has worked well with Manchin, adding that her preference for Raese over Manchin is "not personal; he's a nice guy."

The polished duo of Palin and Raese and the pony-tailed Nugent made for an odd trio at the Haddad Riverfront Park next to the quickly flowing Kanawha River.

While Nugent may be a rock musician — at one point, he picked up his animal-striped electric guitar to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" —

it was Palin who got the rock star's reception. Several young women, barely old enough to vote, showed up with handmade "Team Palin" T-shirts, and one pregnant woman cried when she saw Palin for the first time through the tinted windows of the van as the conservative firebrand pulled up into the driveway.

For Raese, who barely trails Manchin in the polls, a last-minute visit from the kingmaking Palin was quite a coup. Despite the short notice,

the former vice presidential candidate drew a crowd of 1,000, according to police estimates.

Raese's wife, Liz Raese, told POLITICO after the rally that she met Palin years ago through an organization she started, Conservative Women of West Virginia. The two have been in touch ever since — though sources say the visit was organized at the last minute Friday afternoon.

"I told [Liz Raese] that I had to get to West Virginia," Palin told the crowd, including female supporters she described as "mountain mamas."

Palin also told the Raese supporters that their home state and her native Alaska were not that different. Alaska battles for ownership of its oil resources, while West Virginia counts coal as one of its largest industries and similarly must fight to save it from government control, she said.

The mention of coal was met with cheers and hollering from the throng of supporters on the crisp autumn afternoon. Conversely,

the crowd jeered at mentions of the president and references to the cap-and-trade bill, which would stand to hurt the state's coal industry.

Raese told the crowd that just "next door" in Virginia, Obama was campaigning with a Democratic congressman to promote that very bill. Obama appeared with Rep. Tom Perriello Friday evening.

"Creamer's book advocated a "public plan" that would guarantee every U.S. resident's "right" to health care; this plan eventually would serve as a model for the "public option" in subsequent legislative proposals by Congressional Democrats.

In addition, Creamer laid out a "Progressive Agenda for Structural Change," which included a ten-point plan to set the stage for implementing universal health care:

"We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right."

"We must create a national consensus that the health care system is in crisis."

"Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance."

"We need to systematically forge relationships with large sectors of the business/employer community."

"We need to convince political leaders that they owe their elections, at least in part, to the groundswell of support of [sic] universal health care, and that they face political peril if they fail to deliver on universal health care in 2009."

"We need not agree in advance on the components of a plan, but we must foster a process that can ultimately yield consensus."

"Over the next two years, we must design and organize a massive national field program."

"We must focus especially on the mobilization of the labor movement and the faith community."

"We must systematically leverage the connections and resources of a massive array of institutions and organizations of all types."

"To be successful, we must put in place commitments for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used to finance paid communications and mobilization once the battle is joined."

Now don't you find this tale of the Obamacare-writing bank robber and his congresswoman moll pretty darn interesting? Even, shall we say, newsworthy?

After all, nothing more intimately affects our lives than the Obamination currently shutting down Catholic hospitals, sending premiums skyrocketing, and limiting patients' access and options.

And if you really want nightmares, check out Congressman Kevin Brady's organization chart that displays ObamaCare's new government agencies, regulations, and mandates.

In addition to showing the massive expansion of government and the overwhelming complexity of new regulations and taxes, the chart portrays:

$569 billion in higher taxes;

$529 billion in cuts to Medicare;

Swelling of the ranks of Medicaid by 16 million;

Seventeen major insurance mandates; and

The creation of two newbureaucracieswith powers to impose future rationing: the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute

and the Independent Payments Advisory Board....

Yet somehow the great media machine has not seen fit to tell voters about the rancid Romeo and Juliet who gave us this unholy mess.

Instead, they've inundated us with:

- Christine O'Donnell dabbling with witchcraft in high school

- Meg Whitman's housekeeper's immigration status

- Linda McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment treatment of women...

Well, even if the media did miraculously decide to ask Schakowsky some hard questions, she'd be tough to find. She's awfully busy,

calling Tea Partiers "despicable," storming into polling places to illegally electioneer, and sending out her dearest friend to scream at Andrew Breitbart that he's gay.

Fortunately, Chicago voters in the 9th district have an outstanding candidate to vote for in Joel Pollak, magna cum laude Harvard graduate, who published two acclaimed books while attending Harvard Law School. Pollak has been endorsed by Alan Dershowitz, his former professor and a lifelong Democrat.

“If the Democrats continue to stand firmly for immigrant rights, the issue will define immigrants’ voting loyalties for a generation. If we are successful, a gigantic block of progressive votes will enter the electorate over the next 15 years—a block that could be decisive in the battle for the future.”"...

"Less than two years ago, Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin were 30-something suburbanites in metro Atlanta, frustrated by recession, dismayed by the election of Barack Obama and waiting for the next chapter of their lives.

Ms. Kremer, a former Delta Air Lines flight attendant, had quit her career to raise her daughter. The child had grown up and just moved out, and now Ms. Kremer was filling her time with two blogs—one on gardening, one on politics....

was cleaning houses to help pay the bills after her husband's temporary-staffing business collapsed.

They were in danger of losing their home.

As her family's fortunes crumbled, Congress—including Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), for whose campaign Ms. Martin had volunteered—voted for President George Bush's bill to bail out the big Wall Street banks.

Ms. Martin was enraged. "It wasn't because the government didn't bail my husband's business out," she says. "Sometimes it stinks when your business goes bad. But it's part of our system.… The government doesn't need to come in and hold a business up and keep it from failing."

In the span of a few weeks in February and March 2009, the two women met on a conference call and helped found the first major national organization

in the tea-party movement.

Within months, they became two of the central figures in the most dynamic force in American politics this year.

Ms. Kremer, 39, currently chairs the political action committee known as the Tea Party Express. It has raised millions of dollars for upstart candidates and engineered the campaign that threatens Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Once shy about public speaking, today she crisscrosses the country addressing thousands at a time. "Are you ready to fire Harry Reid?" Ms. Kremer bellowed to a crowd of 2,000 in Reno, Nev., this month.

Ms. Martin, 40, is national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, an umbrella group claiming affiliation with nearly 3,000 local groups around the U.S. Leaving her young son and daughter at home, she is on a 30-city tour, revving up activists for the victory she is counting on next Tuesday.

"This was something I had to do," Ms. Martin says. "There were just so many of us who were fed up with the Republican Party."

Powered predominantly by middle-aged, middle-class Americans with limited political experience, the tea-party movement burst out of economic upheaval and the sense among some conservatives that

the Republican Party had discarded them.

It is a braid of many strands of discontent and passion, ranging from opposition to illegal immigration and a national sales tax to support for gun rights. A vocal faction questioning Mr. Obama's legal eligibility to be president provided another source of grassroots fuel.

Today, just two years after a sweeping Democratic victory, the tea-party movement is poised to redraw the landscape again. Nurtured by online networking, it helped disparate activists across the nation link up and push aside high-profile Republican leaders in multiple states this year. Next Tuesday, the movement is expected to topple dozens of Democrats, perhaps Mr. Reid himself.

In the tea party's short life, its leaders have been tested by surprise successes and shattered alliances. They've wrestled with embarrassing revelations about some early leaders that drew charges of racism and xenophobia. Ms. Martin and Ms. Kremer, once friendly, are now embittered toward each other.

These fault lines and rivalries are testing the movement as it tries to become a lasting force.

The movement's roots lie in late 2008, amid discontent over the financial meltdown, the government bailouts and the election of Barack Obama.

Even while President George W. Bush was still in the White House, many conservatives were angry with him and his party over bailouts for banks and for propping up auto makers. With a Democrat headed to the White House, and talk of a vast stimulus bill in the air, fiscally conservative Republicans grew more vocal about spending.

Many conservatives felt Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign had never fully exploited the Internet to raise money and unite disparate activists. The Obama team had proven deft at harnessing technology.

The Democrats' successannoyed Michael Patrick Leahy, a Nashville technology consultant. In late November, he set up a list of

25 contacts called Top Conservatives on Twitter—"#tcot" for short. The next month, he began holding Monday night conference calls, building a network of like-minded activists.

"I found there were a lot of conservatives on Twitter, and they were lonesome and competitive," he says. "We got up to 1,500 within weeks." Among them was Eric Odom, who had compiled a large list of activists through a group working to lift the offshore-drilling ban.

In Washington Township, N.J., Stacy Mott, a stay-at-home mother with a toddler and twin babies, had grown disgusted with both parties. A final straw came when, on Dec. 16,

"That really inflamed conservatives," she says. The salt in the wound: Mr. Obama's election. "My biggest concern was knowing that they were going to have control of both houses…and shove as much stuff through as they could," Ms. Mott says.

"It appeared that he was going to continue to bail out the banks, the auto industry,

and of course he did."

Ms. Mott decided to start a blog for conservative women, Smart Girl Politics, and launched a social-networking site by the same name. That drew in Ms. Kremer and Ms. Martin from Atlanta, who still didn't know one another.

In Seattle, Keli Carender, a 20-something teacher and improv comedian, was also angry at Mr. Bush's "I've abandoned" moment. She felt Mr. Obama's stimulus would be a historic boondoggle. She tried calling the offices of her two U.S. senators, both Democrats, to complain, but says their voicemail boxes were full.

Ms. Carender blogged, too, but decided to do more: She staged a protest. She promoted it on a local talk-radio show and emailed conservative blogger and sometime Fox news consultant

Michelle Malkin, who wrote about the rally online.

On Feb. 17, Ms. Carender was shocked to see 120 people show up at a local park. Tea-party lore credits her event as the first protest of the movement.

'The Rant'

By mid-winter 2009, thousands of conservatives, agitated by the bailouts and the stimulus bill then in Congress, were linking up online, mostly commiserating. Those ties, though, provided

fertile ground for what became known as "the rant."

On Feb. 19, Rick Santelli, a 54-year-old CNBC commentator covering financial markets, was broadcasting live from the Chicago Board of Trade. He had doubts about the government's response to the economic meltdown. The day before, the Obama administration had unveiled

a $75 billion program to help homeowners who couldn't pay their mortgages.

Mr. Santelli grew agitated on air.

"This is America!" he yelled. "How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?"

Critics have said the outburst must have been planned. Mr. Santelli says his monologue was spontaneous. The only "hook to the tea party" in his mind, he says, was that

his youngest daughter had been studying the Boston Tea Party in school.

The rant went viral. The Smart Girl Politics group, which then had around 400 active members, lit up. Ms. Mott says: "Half our members were emailing 'What can we do?'

He kick-started something."

In Georgia, Ms. Martin heard a snippet of the rant while driving between two houses she was cleaning. "We had just lost our house," she recalls, in bankruptcy proceedings.

Ms. Martin said she and her husband realized they could no longer afford their home, and didn't try to keep it. "We decided it would be better to just start over." It was maddening, she says, to imagine the government encouraging others not to take responsibility for buying houses they couldn't afford.

Mr. Leahy of the #tcot group twittered a phone number for a conference call to discuss the rant. On Feb. 20, more than 20 activists dialed in, including Ms. Martin and Ms. Kremer from Georgia and Ms. Carender in Seattle.

Critically, the call included veteran representatives from a range of sizeable causes, some with access to databases stuffed with tens of thousands of contacts.

The group decided July 4 was too long to wait. So it set out to organize simultaneous rallies in cities nationwide—in less than a week. That set off a frenzy.

With a clumsy motto—"Repeal the Pork or Retire"—and frantic calls, the activists threw themselves into full-time organizing. They fielded queries from dozens, then hundreds, of people, often on basic matters like obtaining march permits.

"I was like a therapist at the time," says Ms. Kremer.

On Feb. 27, about 50 events took place across the country. Most drew scores or low hundreds of participants. Ms. Carender, at the same Seattle park where she'd held her first event, drew a bigger crowd of 300.

At one point, she called the office of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and had the group yell a chorus of "Boos!" all at once into the phone.

Crashing Phones

The tea-party conference calls began looking ahead to April 15—federal tax-filing day. The group at first hoped to stage events in at least 40 cities that day. "We lost track at 830" cities and towns, Mr. Leahy said later.

The weekly conference calls grew so large, phones sometimes crashed. Organizers put up a Wikipedia-like website providing protest techniques and advice. Traffic hit 50,000 and 100,000 visitors a day, according to a volunteer tracking the activity.

The effort ran on a shoestring. There was no mechanism for taking contributions, no offices or bookkeeping system. Facebook pages became the central directory.

declaring themselves to be part of the tea-party movement. Within a year there were more than 2,000.

But while people like Ms. Kremer and Ms. Martin—who were still unpaid volunteers at that point—have become the face of the tea party, the movement's success was also being supported by wealthy interests. They included Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, groups born from a conservative think tank formed in the 1980s by members of the Koch family, who run oil-and-gas conglomerate Koch Industries Inc.

On the ground, Ms. Kremer was pushing for more leadership structure for the emerging national organization. By her account,

while standing in her kitchen one day in April, her husband blurted out a suggested name: Tea Party Patriots.

On April 12, Ms. Kremer started a social-networking site using the Tea Party Patriots name, and had someone start building a website. "I'm not boastful," she says, "I started this."

The next month, Ms. Martin, Ms. Kremer and another activist, Mark Meckler, a Grass Valley, Calif., Internet marketer and attorney,

hired a lawyer to incorporate and obtain a trademark on the name.

Media attention grew. Fox News personality Glenn Beck, less than three months into his new show on the network, began touting April 15's planned rallies. He launched his own initiative, the 9/12 Project. Ms. Malkin, the blogger, promoted the events, as did Fox's Sean Hannity. (Fox, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.)

The publicity helped spread the word. On April 15, hundreds of thousands of people—no one can provide a specific number with certainty—gathered in city halls, at post offices, at town squares, parks, and along busy streets.

They poured into Love Park in Philadelphia, and stood outside state houses from Des Moines, Iowa, to Hartford, Conn., to Lansing, Mich.

In Richmond, Va., Colleen Owens, a 48-year-old stay-at-home mother, joined a throng. Aside from voting Republican, she had never been politically active.

"After Bush, I thought, 'Things will get better. We'll be out of these wars,'" she says. Instead, "we were basically heading down a cliff." Few of her friends and neighbors shared the anxiety, she says.

Standing in the rain on April 15, listening to the speakers, Ms. Owens said later: "It was kind of like almost a relief that I wasn't alone."

The movement's success, in just a few weeks' time, was stunning. In a tacit acknowledgment, the White House held its own event on April 15, promoting tax cuts the administration had pushed through."...(I don't recall any tax cuts, do recall hearing something labeled as such which wasn't really a tax cut, will check. ed.) (continuing, Wall St. Journal): "Republican Party leaders praised the rallies,

but privately wondered where the revolt would lead.

Tea Party organizers weren't sure either. "We never said we were going to build some vast network," says Mr. Meckler. "We were just people who didn't really know what we were doing."

Meanwhile, a new initiative was brewing on the West Coast. Sal Russo, a Republican consultant who advised Ronald Reagan in the 1960s and 1970s, sensed the movement's potential after witnessing the rally in Sacramento, Calif. "There were 400 or 500 people there," he says. "We were flabbergasted."

Tea Party Express wanted to raise money for candidates and engineer campaigns.

The Patriots wanted to remain nonpartisan and issues-based, never endorsing specific candidates.

"Our local coordinators told us they didn't want us to endorse candidates," says Ms. Martin of the Patriots group. "They were tired of people coming in and telling them what to do." Mr. Leahy, the founder, dropped out.

The emerging debate was colored by White House plans to pass health-care legislation. Many tea-party activists saw that plan as a massive, costly extension of federal power into Americans' private lives.

In June, FreedomWorks, the libertarian group, put out a "Healthcare Freedom Action Kit" including, among other things, talking points on how to "keep socialized medicine out of the budget" and a 300-word sample letter to the editor.

'Rock-the-boat'

Around that time, as Democrats staged "town hall" meetings, an activist affiliated with Tea Party Patriots circulated a memo coaching people to disrupt the events. "Rock-the-boat," the memo said. "Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge" the representative. "The goal is to rattle him.""...

(They were used to the SILENT MAJORITY being SILENT.)

(continuing, Wall St. Journal):

"Some town hall meetings required police to restore order.

Tea Party Express was preparing its first bus tour, and had invited Tea Party Patriots to join. Mr. Meckler and Ms. Martin were reluctant: Their group, the Patriots, had decided not to endorse or fund specific candidates, so they worried that participating might violate their followers' wishes, and their nonpartisan tax status.

But Ms. Kremer found she wanted to be in the fray—and on the bus. "I was committed to it," she said.

Ultimately, she rode on the tour. There she began to find her voice in front of crowds, and liked it.

The tour ended in Washington, D.C., at a rally organized by Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project that attracted at least 75,000 people. Ms. Kremer came back "a changed person," she says. "I didn't need to stand in the shadows of Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler" she says. "I felt good about myself."

The movement's fame brought attention and drew unwanted messages from some members. Just before the Express tour, a prominent Florida physician and tea-party activist named David McKalip forwarded a doctored image of Mr.Obama as a tribal witch doctor with a bone through his nose to a Google listserve associated with the movement. Critics seized on the episode as evidence of racist tendencies in the tea party.

Dr. McKalip apologized publicly. (In an email to The Wall Street Journal, he said he didn't create the image and "forwarded it in the middle of the night without thinking.") But the incident became a wedge among activists. Ms. Kremer sent an email in defense of Dr. McKalip. "David, we all support you fully and are here for you," she wrote. "I can assure you of one thing and that is we will protect our own. We all have your back, my friend!"

Other Tea Party Patriots were outraged. "The rest of us flipped out. We saw this as racism plain and simple," said Mr. Meckler.

During a two-hour conference call after the witch-doctor incident, Ms. Martin and Mr. Meckler suggested Ms. Kremer resign from Tea Party Patriots.

Ms. Kremer balked. "I cried about it and prayed about it and got back on the phone and said, 'Hell no, I'm not stepping down, I started this," she later recalled saying.

In August 2009, Tea Party Patriots was formally incorporated with a four-person board, including Ms. Martin, Ms. Kremer, Mr. Meckler and Rob Neppell, a conservative blogger.

But relations quickly deteriorated. At one meeting, Ms. Kremer indicated she had hired her own lawyers and might try to claim ownership of the group's intellectual property, according to an affidavit from Ms. Martin. A few weeks later, she was voted off the board.

In countersuits filed in a suburban Atlanta county court, Mr. Kremer and Tea Party Patriots are now fighting out who owns what.

One of her first moves: urging it to back a little-known Republican who had taken on—against all odds—Massachusetts Attorney Gen. Martha Coakley for the Senate seat left vacant by Edward M. Kennedy's death.

His name was Scott Brown.

Mr. Brown's public vow to be the 41st vote in the U.S. Senate against Mr. Obama's proposed health-care overhaul energized tea-party support. Tea Party Express began generating money for Mr. Brown (about $350,000) and attention among activists all over the country.

"There was all of a sudden, this unbelievable flurry of Internet traffic about, 'Hey, what if we could take Kennedy's seat?'" said William Temple, a 60-year-old pastor south of Savannah, Ga., and vice president of the Golden Isles Tea Party there.

On election night, Mr. Brown defeated Ms. Coakley handily. Tea party activists had undoubtedly been a key factor in the election—

the first significant victory for a movement starting to feel its power."

Solano writing a guest commentary in the Denver Post this morning praises Ken Buck’s tenure at the US Attorney’s office. Solano writes;

“During my five-year tenure, historic accomplishments were achieved with Buck as a supervisor. He was instrumental in the success of the office and that of the staff attorneys involved, including opening fully staffed offices in Durango and Grand Junction and establishing an appellate division.”

Solano goes on to address the Golyansky case which has been the source of numerous attack ads against Ken Buck. The case was first used by Jane Norton to attack Ken Buck in her unsuccessful primary campaign. Michael Bennet and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee continue to use the case in an attempt to undermine what now appears to be an enviable and highly successful career at the US Attorney’s office.

Solano is not satisfied with merely restoring Ken Buck’s reputation, but goes on the attack against fellow Democrat Ted Strickland. Solano accuses Strickland, who replaced Solano as the Colorado US Attorney, as exploiting the Columbine massacre for political purpose.

Justice's Civil Rights Division is failing to protect white voters and is

"at war with its core mission of guaranteeing equal protection (under) the laws for all Americans.''

The Justice Department has strongly denied the allegations in the report, which follows the commission's year-long investigation into the Obama administration's handling of the 2008 incident. The Bush administration had filed the lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party members, but the Justice Department under the Obama administration dismissed most of the case.

The commission, which is controlled by a bloc of conservative and liberterian members, was

"This has been a procedural and partisan farce from the beginning,'' Yaki said in an impromptu news conference. "It's not my responsibility to make a quorum for this kangaroo court ... they want to score political points against the Obama Justice Department.''

Members of the commission's majority, who drafted the report, denied they were motivated by politics and accused Justice Department officials of blocking their investigation,

"The degree of stonewalling that the Justice Department has engaged in is unprecedented in the 53-year history of the commission,'' said commissioner Todd F. Gaziano, a senior fellow in legal studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

He said the commission would vote on the 131-page report at its meeting next week.

The accusations illustrate the partisan nature of the debate over the New Black Panther Party case, which triggered outrage from conservatives and congressional Republicans, two internal Justice Department inquiries and the civil rights commission investigation.

The commission, which studies federal enforcement of civil rights laws,

Justice officials have said the case's dismissal was based on a legal analysis and insufficient evidence. They have denied stonewalling the commission's investigation, saying they provided more than 4,000 pages of documents.

"The department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved,'' said Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman. "We are committed to comprehensive and vigorous enforcement of the federal laws that prohibit voter intimidation.''

In the Philadelphia incident, two New Black Panther Party members were videotaped standing outside a polling place on Election Day in 2008 wearing paramilitary uniforms. One carried a nightstick. Although no voters had complained,"...

The commission's draft report said the department's "repeated attempts to obscure" the involvement of political appointees in the dismissal "raise questions about what the Department is trying to hide. ''

The commission's findings are based mostly on the testimony of two Justice Department attorneys involved in the case, as well as media reports, including a recent article in The Washington Post. That article said the case tapped into deep divisions within the Justice Department

Video from 11/4/08 report from the polling place where New Black Panthers intimidated voters. One man went over to observe after hearing of complaints. The man is described as "a Republican" as if concern about a lethal weapon at a polling place would be a partisan matter. The man was dressed in ordinary clothes went up to the building entrance and the two Panthers 'closed ranks, stood together' but the man went in anyway. The "Republican" was getting ready to go back out the door when the Panthers said, "Don't come back outside because a black man is going to win this election no matter what." As the observer went back outside, the Panther(s) said, "We're tired of white supremacy," and Malik Shabazz tapped his night stick (which is a lethal weapon) in his hand to emphasize his point. the observer subsequently called the police to the scene, they came and told the Panthers to leave, or escorted them away. The video also says police are not normally present at polling places as some feel their presence is "intimidating."

7/7/10: "Now imagineif this had been Tea Party members outside a polling place in Philadelphia, Miss.

Not that she's expected to. She's running for Congress in the Jersey Shore's Sixth Congressional District, which went for Mr. Obama over Mr. McCain 60% to 38%. She's the Republican mayor of Highlands, population 5,000 up against

incumbent Frank Pallone, an 11-term Democratic veteran who won in 2008 by 35 points.

The polls came like waves this week. Independents breaking hard for the GOP, those making under $50,000 going Republican, the party has a 20% lead among college graduates. Gallup says 2010 is looking better than the year of the last great sweep,

with 55% of respondents now saying they are Republican or lean Republican.

It was 49% in 1994.

RealClearPolitics has 222 House seats going to the Republicans, 175 to Democrats, and 38 toss-ups, of which 36 are currently held by the Democrats..

NJ Tea Party groups have denounced the fraud for months and asked for an investigation. Asbury Park Press 10/20 reports the fake guy Peter De Stefano has filed bankruptcy and has no real job. His nominating petition includes a variety of relatives of local democrats:

"There are two types of persons at each of the polling stations: one are the poll watchers, who simply sit and “watch” and report any incidents on paper which are suspicious, intimidating or noteworthy.

The other group is the the paid workers, or “judges” as they are called in Texas who sign in the voters and assist them with questions. The poll watchers by law are not allowed to assist, only the judges may do this.

However there have been incidents reported county-wide by the poll watchers the “judges” have been telling the voters to vote “Democratic” and in many cases have actually pulled the levers for them on the voting machines. You can see here one of the incident reports filed. Notice the circled words “illegal assistance to a voter, told voter who to vote for.” And here is another incident report: “illegal discussion in presence of voters, unauthorized person in the polling station.” And look at the name at the bottom: Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.Here is Lee on video, again,illegally at a polling station:"...

"You can also see the PDF file of illegal, suspect and multiple registrations by the same person reported to the Harris County Tax office. These registrations were done by Houston Votes, one of the Soros-funded groups that is ironically suing Ms. Engelbrecht. The Houston Votes Project Director Sean Caddle just happens to be a former SEIU employee and even admits on camera there are “problems” with voter registrations. If this stuff doesn’t make your blood boil, wait until I tell you what else has been happening.

Not only are the judges illegally assisting voters, the Dems have made a concerted effort to harass, intimidate and physically and verbally abuse many of the poll watchers. Many have returned to the office in tears. Ms. Engelbrecht tells me Houston PD was called in two separate incidents, in two separate polling stations because of assault on poll watchers. One poll watcher was even physically dragged out of the polling station, verbally abused and then shoved back inside the polling station. In another incident a voter demanded one of the poll watchers “leave” or he was going to call the constable.

There is a report of a member of the clergy and one extremely aggressive news reporter demanding the personal information of poll watchers, and it was handed over to them by one of the judges. So now not only are the poll watchers harassed, abused and intimidated many of them now have their personal and what is supposed to be confidential information, including addresses and phone numbers released.

What is more extremely outrageous and egregious is most of these poll watchers are “soccer moms” and senior citizens. Yep, I can really imagine these kind of poll watchers “intimidating” the Dems and voters as one of their lawsuits claim. Ms. Engelbrecht tells me she and everyone else were not prepared and never expected this onslaught on them and her organization....

I will again be addressing the voter fraud perpetrated by the Dems and the poll watcher intimidation rampantly taking place in Harris County (Houston). The following information was given to me via a second phone conversation with Catherine Engelbrecht and one of her attorneys. Ms. Engelbrecht and her King Street Patriots/True The Vote organization are being sued by the Texas Democratic Party and the Soros-funded group Houston Votes and are also facing ethics charges from Texans for Public Justice for merely doing their patriotic and civic duty, i.e. maintaining the integrity of this election. Because I did not want to be influenced by any second-hand information while writing this diary I have not visited any blogs or news articles. Everything related in this diary is first-hand from Ms. Engelbrecht. Please see my two previous posts on this subject for background."...Posted by LadyImpactOhio on RedState.com

"Taking office in January 2009 as president, Barack Obama's achievement was everywhere called historic. He was at the pinnacle of American life. Two years later, he may be on the cliff's edge of another historic achievement—the electoral wipeout of his party with some of the Democrats' longest-serving and revered members of Congress disappearing in the avalanche.

Presidencies and parties decline for lots of reasons, but looking back, one of the pivotal events in writing the history of the first Obama term is likely to be

The reason for this unprecedented public criticism of the Court by a president was its 5-4 decision the previous week in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which permitted unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and unions.

Presidential reputation matters, and this attack will be seen as a mistake. It was an unsettling departure from the widely admired persona Mr. Obama built across the 2008 campaign and a

lowering of the bar for normal political discourse.

No surprise that a Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate felt free this week to tell the president publicly to "shove" his endorsement.

That said, Citizens United has become the Democratic left's Roe v. Wade, the case that drove them screaming into the streets. After the decision, the air filled with wails about selling out "our democracy" to a corporate America that would lock up elections unto eternity for the Republican party.

Only this week some laughed when Nancy Pelosi said, "Everything was going great and all of a sudden secret money from God knows where . . . is pouring in." Again with the Citizens United obsession.

Insofar as we now see in the current election that the biggest spenders roaring through the Citizens United floodgates are the public unions, the Obama-Pelosi tantrums seem overwrought, even phony.

Freed to spend their own funds, AFSCME, the SEIU, and the National Education Associationhave spent $171.5 million, compared to political outlays of $140 million by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Crossroads and Crossroads GOP.

It also turns out that "our democracy" wasn't seized by the Fortune 500 but instead by the Everyman 50,000. As one small-business contributor told The Wall Street Journal: "If the Democrats are going to put me out of business, I'm going to put them out of business first." In about 20 words, that's your election.

Still, the Democrats' rage over Citizens United has its own inner logic. It's all about one big dog that isn't barking in this election. That's "card check."

Remember card check? Before ObamaCare sucked all the oxygen out of American politics, the Employee Free Choice Act, or card check, was Barack Obama's other big campaign promise to his base. It died in 2009, after Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Arlen Specter turned against the idea of eliminating secret ballots for union organizing campaigns. The White House told its supporters in organized labor that it was moving on to health care.

In retrospect, it is hard to overstate what a loss this was both for big labor and for the congressional Democrats who on Tuesday will ride Mr. Obama's magnificent health-care Titanic over the falls.

The purpose of card check was to expand union membership in the U.S. The SEIU's then-president, Andy Stern, saw it adding 1.5 million new union members annually. In turn, that would have added hundreds of millions of dollars to the unions' political campaign war chests, creating a powerful political jackhammer to elect legislators, governors and judges. It didn't happen. But Citizens United did happen. If you were a Democratic fund-raiser, you'd be raging too.

If the Court had ruled against Citizens United, there'd have been no new groups like American Crossroads pumping money on its current scale into GOP campaigns. Yes, that would have applied to labor as well, but if card check had passed and started printing political money for them the next 10 years, they wouldn't have needed Citizens United.

Even if the weak economy had slowed organizing before November 2010, card check was a bet on long-term financing for the political activity of the unions, which give more than 95% of their money to Democrats.

The Obama White House still may try to back-door card-check by using executive and administrative orders, but the GOP's political leverage come January will be formidable.

Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi got a health-care law, but it split labor;

many unions absolutely did not need it.

What they and their party of pols needed was card check and its political money, the "mother's milk of politics." Instead, they got Citizens United, which leveled the playing field.

Who in politics wants a level playing field?

Little wonder that the president gave the back of his hand to the justices sitting in front of him.